


An Explanation

by showsforsnails



Category: Bas Lag - China Miéville
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Canon, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25735258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showsforsnails/pseuds/showsforsnails
Summary: The Scar post-canon, Doul explains himself.An old story that I thought I'd translate.
Relationships: The Brucolac/Uther Doul
Kudos: 2





	An Explanation

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Объяснение](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12831468) by [showsforsnails](https://archiveofourown.org/users/showsforsnails/pseuds/showsforsnails). 



For several days after he’s been freed from the ship's mast, the Brucolac stays inside his cabin. He lies in the dark and slumbers even during the nights; to recover his strength, he drinks the blood that his subordinates, who are slowly coming out of hiding, collect from his subjects, who are declaring their loyalty, one by one.

On the fifth night the cabin door opens. Uther Doul is standing in the doorway, with a lantern in his hand.

The Brucolac raises himself on his elbow and looks at him silently. The vampir is covered in burn scars that stand out in dark patches on the greyish skin of his still-handsome face, on his arms and his chest visible under the open shirt.

“I did what I had to do,” Doul says instead of a greeting, his voice quiet and steady.

The Brucolac bares his teeth, his fangs glistening in the lantern-light.

“When?” he asks in a voice that is still hoarse. “When you hung me on the mast? When you untied me? When you pushed me to treason?”

Doul holds his gaze.

“You, too, did what you had to do,” he says.

“You wanted me to revolt,”

“I… knew you would do it,” Doul admits. “I didn’t think you’d make a pact with the Grindylow.”

The Brucolac lets out a short bark of a laugh.

“You know that to save the city I would have made a pact with Hell itself, and Hell’s residents are much more terrifying.”

Doul tilts his head slightly.

“And I know,” the Brucolac adds, “that this city is as close to your heart as it is to mine, yet you, for some reason I can’t understand, refuse to act and prefer following other people's orders and reacting to other people's actions. Which is why I can understand why you provoked me: you needed me to do your dirty work for you. What I can’t understand is why you wouldn’t let me kill the Lovers.”

“I couldn’t,” Doul says, and the Brucolac is surprised into silence. “I had a duty to protect them. It was my job.”

“If you hadn’t made me surrender, I would have won the fight fairly, and you would have had nothing to reproach yourself for.”

“And what next?” Doul says. “You would have become the leader of the Armada, you’d have had to do it, I would have become your lieutenant—”

“My general,” the Brucolac says. “My right hand. I would have trusted you like I trusted myself.”

“What a sight we would have been,” Doul says, mockingly. “A traitor vampir who had seized power, and his closest minion, a traitor just like him. The Armada would have become a city ruled by traitors and murderers. No-one would have remembered that we had done this for the greater good. No-one would have even guessed it.”

“We would have told them.”

“They wouldn’t have believed us. The Lovers are much stronger in this respect. Or they used to be, when there were two of them and they were still the Lovers. I don’t make public speeches. You instill fear, not trust. Sooner or later the people would have risen against us, and _that_ would have been a mutiny you would not have survived.”

“ _If_ we had lost,” the Brucolac says.

“If we had won, drowning the city in blood, this would have been no better than defeat. I didn't come to this city to turn it into a dictatorship—”

“Doul, Doul,” the Brucolac says. “I’ve never known you before to have such a propensity for panic fantasies.”

“This is not a fantasy,” Doul says. “It's one of the possibilities that I decided to avoid.”

“In a way that would hurt me the most,” the Brucolac says, laughing.

“If I hadn’t wanted to keep you alive,” Doul says in a cold voice, “I would have cut off your head and hung your corpse off the mast. This would have worked just as well to end the uprising. But I had no intention of killing you, so I picked the slowest possible manner of execution to leave myself enough time to free you. My estimation had been correct, I was not too late. And now, when the citizens of the Armada have revolted on their own, they're ready to see you as a hero who had been the first to understand and had made a futile attempt to save the city.”

The Brucolac bares his teeth again, sticking out his forked tongue, tasting the air that Doul’s smell has already melted into.

“I’m touched,” he says. “I’m just a primitive vampir, I’d never have thought of doing something like this to show I cared, or to prove my patriotism.”

He beckons with a bony finger with a long curved fingernail. Doul approaches him slowly, puts the lantern on the floor and sits down on the edge of the vampir’s bed.

“I did what I had to do,” he repeats, looking straight ahead, “I couldn’t have done anything differently.”

He turns to the Brucolac, still not meeting his eyes.

“I don’t know what to do next.”


End file.
